It’s the time of year when people on the radio ask each other if they are the type who likes the heat. In the UK it’s perfectly acceptable to say no, I hate the heat, I consider these bright June days more or less uninhabitable, and I can’t wait for summer to end next week. When I say I’m the sort of person who does likes the heat, what I mean is I used to like it, when I was nine and lived next to the beach. Now that I spend all day typing in a box at the end of my garden, I like it less, but I would never admit that on the radio. As I walk out to my office shed in the early morning, the sun already high in the sky, I see the tortoise coming toward me. The tortoise likes the heat. He’s travelling at his summer velocity, a rate of progress that could potentially be rendered in miles per hour, rather than his usual feet per day. I’m wearing flip-flops, and when my feet pass by, the tortoise stops abruptly, turns and follows. His favourite food, some way ahead of radish tops, is the human big toe. It’s not hard to stay one step ahead of a tortoise, but as the hare in the fable learned, the real enemy is complacency, when you think: I’m so far ahead of that tortoise now I can just sit down in this lawn chair and read a chapter of a novel. That’s when you’ll feel that pointy beak clamping down. I unlock my office, draw down all the blinds and open everything wide, including the flapped window above my computer screen, pushing it outward until it grazes the wisteria climbing the fence beyond. The temperature will be unbearable in an hour, but for now it’s still cool inside. The tortoise climbs the brick step and stares up at me, unable to conquer the final, overhanging lip of the threshold. “You can’t touch me in here,” I say. His expression says: you’ll have to come out sometime; you can’t handle the heat. “What are you talking about?” I say. “I love this weather.” His fixed stare is unnerving, but it’s too warm to shut the door. After 15 minutes I return to the kitchen. The tortoise follows. By the time I come back with a lettuce, he is three-quarters of the way across the lawn. I drop the lettuce on the grass between us and he is, for the moment, placated. But seconds after I sit down at my desk, I hear the scrape of tortoise shell on the brick step. When I look up he is already staring at me. The lettuce has been reduced to a stub. The tortoise’s speed is essentially a function of temperature. If he’s moving this quickly at 9am, I think, what will he be like after lunch? After lunch my office is sweltering, but the tortoise is no longer outside it. I watch a video of what is claimed to be the world’s fastest tortoise, Bertie from Durham. Bertie managed 0.6mph over a straight 5.48-metre course. I think: my tortoise could do that, if you put a bunch of toes up one end. From a distant open window somewhere I hear voices coming from a radio, discussing the imminent restarting of a dormant coal-fired power station, just to cope with people running their air conditioners. One voice says: “So how about you? Are you someone who likes the heat?” “I confess I’m not,” says the other. “I’m not good in the heat.” I think: idiots. I turn back to my work, but my concentration eventually gives way to drowsiness. My eyelids begin to droop, the left more than the right. There is a sudden crash above my screen, and I have the sense of something flying towards me. “Agh!” I scream. “Miaow!” shrieks the cat. It evidently tried to leap from the fence through the open window, but was not expecting to find me sitting there. After a graceless mid-air retreat, it ends up clinging to the sill by its front paws, regarding me with surprised eyes. “What are you doing?” I say, my heart pounding. “Miaow,” says the cat, slipping back down the outside wall. My phone rings. Instinctively, I stand up to take the call. “Hello?” I say, turning away from my screen. “Yeah, now’s a good time,” I say. I step outside absentmindedly, and begin to stroll across the grass. “Which week is this?” I say, pausing for a minute. “Anyway, I’m sure it’s fine.” The tortoise breaks cover, diving out from under a rosemary bush and bearing down on my toes. “I don’t mind it,” I say, lifting first one foot, then the other. “What about you, are you a heat person?”